2014: The Year in Film: "22 Jump Street" Review

So 21 Jump Street, the Jonah Hill/Channing Tatum reboot of the late 80's TV series, was one of the more pleasant movie surprises of recent years. Directed by the awesome Phil Lord and Chris Miller (LEGO Movie), the flick accomplished several things: it continued the resurrection of the action/comedy genre in the style of Beverly Hills Cop, and it revealed that Channing Tatum is secretly an uber charismatic dude with a great sense of humor.

In the sequel, the stars and creators don't even bother with pretending that this one is anything other than more of the same, shamelessly making meta comments on the bigger budget and "more of the same" approach. In the hands of lesser talent, that would be obnoxious and grating, but the filmmakers pull it off here.  After 21 Jump Street, where Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) successfully brought down a major drug trafficking operation in a chaotic and mad-cap way, the department has decided to continue the undercover operation, only across the street at 22 Jump Street, with Schmidt and Jenko being sent to college in order to investigate another dangerous new drug.

The Good: the "bromance" hetero while pretty damn homoerotic love story between friends should be played out at this point, a solid 10 years after 40 Year Old Virgin, but owing to the chemistry between Hill and Tatum, the film makes it work. This is a story about the enduring bond between friends/bros through the turmoil of new relationships, new places and new friends wrapped in a college film wrapped in an action cop movie. The film never fails to recognize that everything happening is preposterous, but Hill and Tatum are so charming and hilarious in their roles that everything feels funny, smart and fresh. Several supporting characters are given more to do in this iteration, especially Ice Cube, who really relishes the opportunity to play a father, boss and badass police captain in this ridiculous universe. There's an extended post-credit sequence that provides the most LOL's I had in any movie all year.



The Bad: as much fun as everyone involved is clearly having, it's still undeniably lazy to just do the SAME THING over again. This flick is basically a complete rehash of the first one, and while that's a lot of fun, I think there would have been something to be said for letting this one breathe a little more, as it kind of treads the line of tedious and lazy on occasion.

Ultimately, despite being the EXACT SAME movie as 21 Jump Street, and making a ton of lazy bromance jokes, everyone involved is charming and funny enough to still make everything work. The chemistry between Tatum and Hill is palpable, and the flick offers a ton of laugh-out-loud worthy moments. If you liked 21 Jump Street, you'll like this one... and if you didn't, why would you want to watch this one anyway?

7.5/10.

2014: The Year in Film: "Edge of Tomorrow" Review

Guys, yes, Tom Cruise is a weirdo. An unrelenting, utterly strange weirdo with indefensible beliefs and a penchant for acting like a spaz. HOWEVER, he's also really talented and charismatic in the old-school movie star way, wherein every character he plays is just a shade of Tom Cruise rather than a discernible and separate person, and that can be fine and work really well in its own way. I'll say this: Tom Cruise has never been the problem in any of his various movies, no matter whether the flick is good (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Minority Report, etc.) or bad (War of the Worlds, Mission Impossible 2), Tom Cruise is going to give you what you signed up for, a workmanlike, dependable, yeoman's effort.  I respect that, and so should you.

So enter: "Edge of Tomorrow", an adaptation of a Japanese book titled "All You Need is Kill" (MUCH better title, btw) where a soldier finds himself forced to re-live the same battle over and over in "Groundhog Day" fashion. Tom Cruise is Major William Cage, a cocky military communications officer who finds himself conscripted into a combat battalion on the eve of a huge and potentially decisive battle with invading aliens on the French coast. These aliens are seemingly unbeatable, and humanity has managed just one victory against them, led by a mysterious (and very badass) woman named Rita. (Emily Blunt) Tom Cruise finds himself living this day over and over again as he struggles to find a way to defeat the alien invaders.

The Good: Despite the video game-esque premise, the film is actually executed pretty darn well, and the conceit of Tom Cruise getting better and better at fighting the aliens with each incarnation is an entertaining and effective one.  Considering that Cruise having chemistry with his co-stars seems to be a hit-or-miss proposition, he gets on with Emily Blunt very well, and they make quite an effective pair, with Blunt as the hardened soldier and Cruise as the novice.  The action sequences are chaotic but well-crafted and visually very impressive, with the film doing a pretty strong job of depicting what a future war with aliens could well look like. The film is surprisingly touching in spots, far smarter and more entertaining than it should be, and has a sense of fun and humor throughout, taking advantage of what could be a limiting premise to really explore and flesh out the ramifications.



The Bad; there is one BIG bad element that honestly knocked this flick down from one of my favorites of the year to merely a smart and effective sci-fi action flick... and that's the ending. I'm not sure who decided that audiences in 2014 are unable to handle an ending that doesn't neatly tie together with a ribbon, but it feels cheap, out of place, and like a lazy deus ex machina. Additionally, the notion that Cruise is a Major thrust into combat as a raw recruit is never explained, and feels like an add-on to explain why a 40 year old guy is battling with grunts. However, these are relatively minor complaints, and the flick is well worth watching if you're a fan of sci-fi action flicks.

Surprisingly smart, well-made, touching and entertaining, this Groundhog's Day with guns and aliens actually manages to be a worthwhile addition to the sci-fi canon. If it wasn't for a cop-out ending, it might just be a classic.

8/10.

2014: The Year in Film: "Godzilla" Review

Godzilla is just one of those things that's REALLY famous because, in all honesty, popular culture 40 years ago sucked, and now that "Boomers" are the only people with money, they get to pretend like everything that was around in their formative is extremely significant and mind-blowing. Don't get me wrong, a giant lizard/dinosaur thing that breathes fire and destroys major cities is pretty awesome in a big, loud, crazy way, and undoubtedly Godzilla is a big freaking deal in Japan, which has its own reasons to be concerned about the nuclear age, but I feel that we're doing the entire endeavor a serious disservice by pretending that Godzilla is a BIG FREAKING DEAL. This is my preface to the entire affair for a reason that I'll delve into a little later on in this post.  1998's Godzilla is an absolutely toilet movie. It makes no sense, it's disgustingly corporate in that awful 90's way, it's horribly acted, worse written, and doesn't even pretend to make sense. Plus, Godzilla looks like a T-Rex because Roland Emmerich likes Jurassic Park, I guess? The 90's was a strange era, one where Jeff Goldblum could headline Hollywood blockbusters, so I understand the motivation behind casting Matthew Broderick, but it's safe to say that the entire affair was an unmitigated disaster. It is weirdly fun to recall, however, that snippet of time in the mid-to-late 90's when movie soundtracks were a THING and sold millions of albums, as the Godzilla soundtrack was pretty damn hyped up and featured that godawful Puff Daddy (with Jimmy Page!) abortion of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

Enter 2014's Godzilla, a film that brought on acclaimed indie monster movie director Gareth Edwards and a massive budget to redeem the character of Godzilla and the film franchise as a whole. We're introduced to a world where man's entry to the nuclear age awoke some very ancient and very powerful creatures from earth's past who were powered by the now faded naturally occurring radiation produced from the young earth. A disaster at a Japanese nuclear power plant in the 90's and a series of bizarre happenings around the world led a group of scientists to discover mysterious creatures - deemed MUTOs. As these MUTOs begin to ransack the greater Pacific, it becomes clear that another creature is out there. Godzilla.

The Good: This film looks great. It really does service to the massive scale of the production as the effects and scenes of destruction are really convincing and often pretty to look at. The monster scenes are well-done, the destruction convincing, and the climatic battle between Godzilla and the MUTOs is actually pretty awesome. I really appreciate the effort to make Godzilla real-feeling and bring a convincing cinematic treatment to bear, even if it wasn't always effective, I appreciate it. While the acting isn't this film's strong suit, Bryan Cranston (Heisenberg!) is memorable, and really does a lot with the material that he's given.



The Bad: Ultimately, the decision to try to "science-up" Godzilla was a stupid one. You're not going to be able to craft a convincing scientific explanation for an 800 foot tall monster, so why even try? The film goes to great lengths in the first half to explain how and why its monsters came to be, and then throws all of that pretext out the window so they can have a cool battle. If you knew the film was going to end with monsters smashing cities as they fought, (including a scientist actually saying "Let them fight") why bother with the scientific pretext? It's a silly decision that ultimately cheapens the film and makes the whole thing actually feel dumber than if they hadn't tried at all. But this film has bigger problems than science. For its long runtime, there's surprisingly little Godzilla. You see the MUTOs much more than you see Godzilla himself, and while I understand that sometimes 'less is more', it's also undoubtedly true that you should feature the titular character as much as possible. What is in the 2 hours of movie that don't feature Godzilla, you ask? Well, NOT BRYAN CRANSTON. He dies WAY too early, considering that he's the only actor featured in all of the film's marketing. Instead we get generic military dude Aaron "Kickass" Taylor-Johnson who just kind of deadpans everything while playing a humorless bore lacking either the charisma or the gravitas to properly ground a monster movie. And he's not the only boring member of his own family: we also get his wife (Elizabeth Olson) who does nothing at all other than get pointlessly put in harm's way as if we needed an emotional center to have it sink in that an entire city was being destroyed. Guys, the "damsel in distress" ploy went out of style 20 years ago. We aren't going to be emotionally invested just because a random pretty chick who we never even got to know is in peril. This relationship has no stakes because it's never developed, and it's portrayed by two actors who have utterly mailed the entire thing in. The film would have been infinitely better if Taylor-Johnson's scenes all went to Cranston, and Olson wasn't in the film at all. The choice to feature humans OVER Godzilla could have worked if the human characters were developed or interesting at all. They weren't and they aren't. Ultimately, the whole film feels lazy and like an excuse to have Godzilla tear off another monster's head. THAT'S TOTALLY AWESOME, BUT IT'S NOT ENOUGH FOR 120 BORING MINUTES.

If you're interested in boring, poorly-acted characters masquerading as military dudes and nurses, or never paid attention in science class and think a movie is worthwhile if it features a cool monster Mortal Kombat-style "Finish Him" death at the expense of every other element that makes a good film, congratulations, Godzilla is for you. If you're a human being who has a brain and appreciates it when filmmakers don't treat you like an easily-manipulated child who gets amazed by shiny things and automatically sympathizes for a couple with a small child even if they're the most boring people on earth, don't watch Godzilla, unless you're planning on making fun of everything. This film was extremely disappointing for me, because it seriously looked great, and the Godzilla scenes are all REALLY well done, but ultimately it just felt cheap and lazy and thrown together, and it threw away the best character in the film for no reason other than Cranston had to go shoot something else or whatever the reason was. Either make a "serious" Godzilla film, or make a movie where Godzilla rips off heads, but you can't have it both ways. Ultimately, the decision to have this film be the bipolar offspring of a fun action flick and serious sci-fi drama completely torpedoed the whole thing from the jump. Without the benefit of having a memorable or even strong performance at its core, the film just feels lost. Let's put it this way: one of the guys I saw the flick with legitimately thought there were two Godzillas, and I can totally see why he would think that. WHEN PEOPLE CAN'T TELL HOW MANY GODZILLAS ARE IN YOUR MOVIE YOU HAVEN'T DONE YOUR JOB, GUYS.

4/10.

2014: The Year in Film: "X-Men: Days of Future Past" Review

Am I actually ahead of DVD releases yet?? I think I am...

Kind of odd that three consecutive movie reviews here at HOB have featured three separate parts of the Marvel Comic Universe brought to film by three separate studios, but that's just the way that my movie going calendar played out in April and May of this year. It's worth noting that the X-Men are among the most popular comic book franchises on the planet, rivaled only by Batman, and that they feature a rich cast of characters that should be pretty easily brought over to film. Fox's X-Men films have been an interesting ride. First, Bryan Singer's original film X-Men, released in 2000 (!!) kind of kick-started this whole comic book film era that we're still in the midst of. Without the relative quality (it hasn't held up great, but considering that the film was released only a few short years after the horror that was Batman and Robin, its success was a necessity if major studios were going to take chances on big-budget comic book fare again. The sequel, X2, released in 2003, still holds up as one of the better comic book films that we've had. Then Bryan Singer left to go make the snoozefest that was Superman Returns, and professional hatchet man Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner was Sony's choice to direct the horrid and continuity crushing X-Men: The Last Stand, which was nearly the death of the X-Men on film until 2011's surprise X-Men: First Class, which took advantage of a stellar cast (Jennifer Lawrence! Michael Fassbender!) to resurrect the X-Men on film. When watching First Class, if you would have assumed that you were watching a total reboot... no one would have blamed you, as that was obviously the intention at the time. However, Bryan Singer returned to the X-Men franchise.. and the studio made the baffling decision to treat all of the X-Men films as one continuity. No, that doesn't seem possible.

Enter, X-Men: Days of Future Past, inspired by one of the legendary X-Men stories in the comics, where a dystopian future where the world has been decimated by mutant-hunting robots can only be prevented by traveling to the past. The film opens with a glimpse at that future, where the remnants of the X-Men struggle to survive, and desperate plan emerges, to send Wolverine's consciousness back in time. to stop the event that precipitated the creation of the Sentinels, robots that hunt and destroy mutants. Wolverine is sent back to the 1970's, to meet up with the First Class cast, and recruit them into saving the future.

The Good: First Class might have gotten more lucky with its cast than any film I can recall. It successfully signed Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence to co-starring/supporting roles immediately before they both blew up into huge stars. As a result, Days of Future Past gets Fassbender at the height of his powers as a young Magneto and Katniss Everdeen herself as villain/antihero Mystique. James McAvoy as a young Professor Xavier was perfect casting as well. Hugh Jackman does a pretty great Wolverine, and here he serves as the bridge between the two timelines. The cast, especially Fassbender, elevates the film beyond the simple sum of its parts, adding real heft and gravitas to the 70's timeline. Story-wise, this film is about 10,000X better than it has any right to be. As anyone who has seen all of the X-Men films can attest, unifying the timelines and treating it as a cohesive whole should be practically impossible, and while this film doesn't pull it off perfectly, it comes PRETTY damn close, which in and of itself is an impressive feat. Despite a runtime of over two hours, the film feels tight and tense throughout, with events in one timeline influencing the other in a palpable way. Despite some big, impressive action scenes, this film winds up focused on character in a very subtle and welcome deviation from what has become the superhero movie norm (namely: HUGE action sequence to close everything).  The film looks great, and really pulls off the differing timelines visually.



The Bad: While it overall works pretty damn well, the film's premise (reconciling two seemingly irreconcilable narratives) kind of falls apart the more that you think about it. This is probably more of a problem for me, the nerd, than it would be for a more casual viewer, but some of the events of the last X-Men franchise don't make sense in light of some of the revelations from this one. And that's fine, it shouldn't have worked AT ALL, so the fact that it does mostly work is impressive.  Additionally, the film's "big bad", Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), feels underserved in comparison to the in-fighting among our mutants from varying timelines. The future timeline suffers at the expense of the 1970's one, and feels underserviced in comparison to all of the 70's action.

In all, this is a fine flick and a smart, thoughtful, surprisingly effective entrant to the comic book film collection that's somehow still not played out. Welcome back, Bryan Singer, and holy hell is Fassbender good. The main draw is the past/future versions of Professor X and Magneto - with some serious acting chops on display, and they do not disappoint.

8.5/10. If you like the X-Men at all, this just might be the best X-movie yet.